Turkish belongs to the Altaic branch of
the Ural-Altaic family of languages.

Ural-Altaic languages
were originally spoken by the Altai people who lived in the steppe area around
the Altai mountains which form part of the border between China, Mongolia and
Russia. The Altai people led a nomadic life and spread out over a vast geographical area, reaching as far as
the Balkans. Turks, too, for centuries
being nomads, took their language along where ever they moved.
Today 100-120 million people speak these languages, generally
called the Turkic Languages. A version of these Languages, Turkish, came to
Anatolia with these people from the 11C and onwards. Turkish is a very ancient language,
that goes back to 5500 years, and perhaps even
8500.

Ural-Altaic family of languages also includes Finnish and Hungarian, and is
closely related to Mongolian, Manchu-Tungus, Korean, and perhaps Japanese. Some
scholars say that the similarities are not fundamental, but rather the result of
borrowings. However, Altaistic studies in recent years show that the languages
listed here all go back to a common Ural-Altaic group.

The Turkish language is the sixth widely
spoken language in the world, as through the span of history Turks have spread over a wide geographical
area, taking their language with them. Turkish speaking people have lived in a
wide area stretching from today's Mongolia to the north coast of the Black Sea, the
Balkans, East Europe,
Anatolia, Iraq and a wide area of northern Africa. Due to the distances
involved, various dialects and accents have emerged. It is spoken in the Azeri, the Türkmen, the Tartar, the Uzbek, the
Baskurti, the Nogay, the Kyrgyz, the Kazakh, the Yakuti, the Cuvas and in many
other dialects from

the Balkans across Central Asia into north western China and
southern Siberia.

Turkish is the westernmost of the Turkic
languages spoken across Central Asia and is generally classified as a member of
the South-West group, also known as the Oguz-Türkmen language group. Except for
superficial differences in vocabulary, the Turkic languages are similar enough
that under other political circumstances they would very probably be considered
dialects of the same language. The central Soviet government focused attention
on, and fostered, the differences among the Central Asian republics and their
languages. Now, with independence, these separate republics are exploring their
similarities and differences, and working out their alliances with one another
and with Turkey.

Other than differences in vocabulary, Turkish
is mutually understandable among the Turkic languages spoken in adjacent areas,
in particular Azerbaijani, Uzbek, and Turkmen, and a speaker of Turkish can be
understood as far east as Kyrgyzstan.

Strictly speaking, the "Turkish" languages spoken between
Mongolia and Turkey should be called Turkic languages, and the term "Turkish"
should refer to the language spoken in Turkey alone. It is common practice,
however, to refer to all these languages as Turkish, and differentiate them with
reference to the geographical area, for example, the Turkish language of
Azerbaijan.

TURKISH ALPHABET

The fundamental features which distinguish the Ural-Altaic languages from the
Indo-European are as follows:

Vowel harmony, a feature of all Ural-Altaic tongues.

The absence of gender.

Agglutination

Adjectives precede nouns.

Verbs come at the end of the sentence.

Linguistic Sketch of Turkish

As an Altaic language, Turkish has virtually nothing in
common with English or other Indo-European languages except for some loan
words, usually from French and some from English.

Like all of the Turkic languages, Turkish is agglutinative, that is, grammatical
functions are indicated by adding various suffixes to stems. Suffixes may indicate passive, reflexive,
causative, and other meanings. Separate suffixes on nouns indicate both gender
and number but there is no grammatical gender in Turkish. The same word, "o", for example, means "he", "she" and "it".

Nouns are declined in three declensions with six case
endings: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, and ablative;
number is marked by a plural suffix.

Verbs agree with their
subjects in case and number, and as in nouns, separate identifiable suffixes
perform these functions. The order of elements in a verb form is: verb stem +
tense aspect marker + subject affix.

There is no definite article; the number "one" may be used as
an indefinite article.

Subject-Object -Verb word order in Turkish is a typical Turkic characteristic,
but other orders are possible under certain discourse situations. As a SOV
language where objects precede the verb, Turkish has postpositions rather than
prepositions, and relative clauses that precede the verb.

One other descriptive feature of the Turkish language is the
Vowel and Consonant. Turkish has 8 vowels, and 20 consonants. It also has Turkic vowel harmony in
which the vowels of suffixes must harmonize with the vowels of noun and verb
stems; thus, for example, if the stem has a round vowel then the vowel of the
suffix must be round, and so on. Stress on words pronounced in isolation is on
the final syllable, but in discourse, stress assignment is complicated
especially in the verb.

Harmony: According to this
principle rule front vowels (e, i,) and back vowels (a, i, o, u) go
together with one another and do not make combinations with the other
category. For example; "erik" plum, and "ucak" airplane.

There are suffixes are also
added to the stem of the words to generate new words or even sentences. Take
this extreme and interesting example for instance, "Cekoslavakyalilastiramadiklarimizdanmisiniz?."
If we should translate this one word-sentence (43 letters) into English, it
means " Are you one of those that we could not have possibly turned into a
Checkoslavakian?" If we should have a closer look at the suffixes forming the
sentence, we can find the following:

Cekoslavakya

= Checkoslavakia

li

= from

las

= reflexive suffix

tir

= causative suffix

a

= ability

ma

= negation

di

= past tense

k

= first person plural

lar

= plural

i

= harmony suffix

miz

= first person plural

dan

= from

mi

= question suffix

siniz

= second person plural

Interesting isn't it? I would again like to remind you that,
this is one of the extremist examples and you don't usually get this long words.

Pronunciation

Pronunciation of Turkish words is phonetic with all letters having the same
value in every situation. The stress on Turkish words is more pronounced than in
English. It usually falls on the last syllable. Names of places are the
exceptions where stress can be on any syllable, such as Istanbul, Marmaris, and
Izmir.

The Turkish alphabet is designed
for the easiest phonetic description: For instance, to describe the sound of "ch"
as in "chalk", in Turkish alphabet there is the letter of "c" with a cedilla,
a dot under the letter "c". The same applies for "sh" sound as in "shore". In
Turkish you simply put a cedilla under the letter "s". You can see
these letters in the Turkish Alphabet chart above. (The reason why I refer you
to that chart instead of writing these letters right here or why I don't use
them in Turkish names in this site is that
your browser might not support Turkish characters and you may find totally
irrelevant letters if not signs instead.)

There is another interesting
letter in Turkish and it is the so-called "the soft g". This symbol is created
by adding a cedilla this time to the top of the letter "g". The reason why it is
called "the soft g" is the fact that you prolong the preceding vowel when there
is a "soft g", in a way softening the utterance.

The Turkish
alphabet has 8 vowels (A E I I O Ö U Ü ) and 21 consonants. The letters Q, W
and X do not exist in Turkish. Most letters are pronounced pretty much as
you would expect, but some are not. Once the phonetic value of all letters
is known, then it is rather easy to pronounce any word one sees or to spell
any word one hears.

When Turkish in Turkey is considered in a chronological context, it can be
classified according to three separate periods:

Old Anatolian Turkish (between the 7th and the 15th centuries)

Ottoman Turkish (from the 15th to the 19th century)

20th century Turkish

1)

Ancient Written Records of Old Anatolian Turkish & Turkish in the
Pre-Islamic
Period

Turkish is a very ancient language, with a flawless phonetic, morphological
and syntactic structure, and at the same time possesses a wealth of vocabulary.
Recent studies show that this language goes back to 5500 years, and perhaps even
8500. Until the 10C AD, before the Turks adopted Islam and came to Anatolia,
Turkish language was at its purest state because it was not influenced by any
other language. Gokturk and Uighur Alphabets were used.

The oldest written records are found upon stone monuments in
Central Asia, in the Orhon, Yenisey and Talas regions within the
boundaries of present-day Mongolia. These were erected to Bilge Kaghan (735),
Kültigin (732), and the vizier Tonyukuk (724-726). Apart from these, there
are some one hundred inscriptions of various sizes mentioned by the Swedish army
officer Johan von Strahlenberg. The first to read them and publish his results
was the Danish Turcologist Wilhelm Thomsen, while the Russian Turcologist (of
Prussian extraction) Wilhelm Radloff contributed in a major way to the
deciphering of the script. The perfection of the language used in these records,
which document the social and political life of the Gokturk Dynasty,
proves that Turkish, as a language of letters, has been in use from very ancient
times.

In later periods many forms of writing would appear:
Nestorian writing in the northeast, Sogd, Uighur, and Pali writings
in the southeast, Manichaean texts. In Brahman writing, and from the 11th
centuary onward, Arabic script for Islamic texts. In addition, depending on the
region in which they lived, the Turks have used Suryani, Armenian, Georgian
and ancient Greek alphabeths, producing literary works which have
transmitted the Turkish culture up to the present day.

After the waning of the Gokturk state, the Uighurs produced
many written texts that are among the most important source works for the
Turkish language. The Uighurs produced many written texts that are among the
most important source works for the Turkish language. They abandoned
shamanism (the original Turkish religion) in favor of Buddhism,
Manichaeanism and Brahminism, and translated the pious and philosophical works
of all of them into Turkish. Examples are Altun Yaruk, Mautrisimit, Sekiz Yükmek,
Huastunift, etc. These were collected by european turcologists in Turkische
Turfan-Texte.

The Kokturk (Gokturk) inscriptions, together with Uighur
writings, are in a language called by scholars Old Turkish. This term refers to
the Turkish spoken, prior to the conversion to Islam, on the steppes of Mongolia
and Tarim basin.

With the emergence of the Cagatay Dynasty, which came
about when the Empire of Genghis Khan was divided among his sons, a new
wave of Turkish literature was born and flowered under the influence of Persian
literature. It reached its pinnacle with the works of Ali Sir Navai in the 15th
century.

The Turkish of Turkey that developed in Anatolia and
across the Bosphorus in the times of the Seljuks and Ottomans was used in
several valuable literary works prior to the 13th century. The men of letters of
the time were, notably, Sultan Veled, the son of Mevlana Celaleddin-i
Rumi, Ahmed Fakih, Seyyad Hamza, Yunus Emre, a
prominent thinker of the time, and the famed poet, Gulsehri.

2) Ottoman Turkish & Turkish in the Islamic
Period

Islamic period is the period between the 10C and 20C.
From the 11C onward the Turks started to settle in Anatolia in large
numbers, first as Seljuks and then later as Ottomans. They had already
adopted Islam, which meant they were influenced by Arabic since the Koran
was written in that language. However, Persian remained the language of art,
refined literature and diplomacy. Common people spoke Turkish but used the
Arabic alphabet to write it. This mixture was called Ottoman Turkish or the
Ottoman language.

Early ages of Islamic period

The "Divanü-Lügati't-Türk" (1072), the dictionary edited by Kasgarli Mahmut
to assist Arabs to learn Turkish, was written in Arabic. In the following
century, Edip Ahmet Mahmut Yükneri wrote his book "Atabetü'l-Hakayyk", in
Eastern Turkish, but the title was in Arabic. All these are indications of the
strong influence of the new religion and culture on the Turks and the Turkish
language.

In spite of the heavy influence of Islam, in texts written in Anatolian
Turkish the number of words of foreign origin is minimal. The most important
reason for this is that during the period mentioned, effective measures were
taken to minimize the influence of other cultures. For example, during the Karahanlilar period there was significant resistance of Turkish against the
Arabic and Persian languages. The first masterpiece of the Muslim Turks,
"Kutadgu Bilig" by Yusuf Has Hacib, was written in Turkish in 1069.

Ali Sir Nevai of the Çagatay Turks defended the superiority of Turkish from
various points of view vis-a-vis Persian in his book "Muhakemetül-Lugateyn",
written in 1498.

During the time of the Anatolian Seljuks and Karamanogullari, efforts were
made resulting in the acceptance of Turkish as the official language and in the
publication of a Turkish dictionary, "Divini Turki", by Sultan Veled (1277).

AhmetFakih, Seyyat Hamza and Yunus Emre adopted the same attitude in their
use of ancient Anatolian Turkish, which was in use till 1299. Even after
the emergence of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Orhan promulgated the first official
document of the State, the "Mülkname", in Turkish.

In the 14th century, Asikpasa, Gülsehri, Ahmedi and Kaygusuz Abdal, in the
15th century Süleyman Çelebi and Haci Bayram and in the 16th century Sultan
Abdal and Köroglu were the leading poets of their time, pioneering the literary
use of Turkish. In 1530, Kadri Efendi of Bergama published the first study of
Turkish grammar, "Müyessiretül-Ulum".

The outstanding characteristic in the evolution of the written language
during these periods was that terminology of foreign origin was accompanied with
the indigenous. Furthermore, during the 14th and 15th centuries translations
were made particularly in the fields of medicine, botany, astronomy, mathematics
and Islamic studies, which promoted the introduction of a great number of
scientific terms of foreign origin into written Turkish, either in their
authentic form or with Turkish transcriptions.

Scientific treatises made use of both written and vernacular Turkish, but the
scientific terms were generally of foreign origin, particularly Arabic. However,
the mixing of Turkish with foreign words in science and poetry did not last
forever.

Ottoman Turkish

Ottoman Turkish was basically Turkish in structure, but with
a heavy overlay of Arabic and Persian vocabulary and an occasional grammatical
influence. Particularly after the 16th century foreign terms dominated written texts, in
fact, some Turkish words disappeared altogether from the written language. In
the field of literature, a great passion for creating art work of high quality
persuaded the ruling elite to attribute higher value to literary works
containing a high proportion of Arabic and Persian vocabulary, which resulted in
the domination of foreign elements over Turkish. This development was at its
extreme in the literary works originating in the palace. This trend of royal
literature eventually had its impact on folk literature, and numerous foreign
words and phrases were used by folk poets.

The extensive use of Arabic and Persian in science and literature not only
influenced the spoken language in the palace and its surroundings, but as time
went by, it also persuaded the Ottoman intelligentsia to adopt and utilise a
form of palace language (Ottoman Turkish) heavily reliant on foreign elements.

As a result, there came into being two different types of language. One in
which foreign elements dominated, and the second was the spoken Turkish used by
the public.

From the 16th to the middle of the 19th century, Turkish used in science
and literature was supplemented and enriched by the inclusion of foreign items
under the influence of foreign cultures. However, since there was no systematic
effort to limit the inclusion of foreign words in the language, too many began
to appear.

In the mid-19th century, Ottoman Reformation (Tanzimat) enabled a new
understanding and approach to linguistic issues to emerge, as in many other
matters of social nature.

The Turkish community which had been under the influence of Eastern culture,
was exposed to the cultural environment of the West. As a result, ideological
developments such as the outcome of reformation and nationalism in the West,
began to influence the Turkish community, and thus important changes came into
being in the cultural and ideological life of the country.

The most significant characteristic with respect to the Turkish language was
the tendency to eliminate foreign vocabulary from Turkish.

In the years of the reformation, the number of newspaper, magazines and
periodicals increased and accordingly the need to purify the language became
apparent.

The writing of Namik Kemal, Ali Suavi, Ziya Pasa, Ahmet Mithat Efendi
and Semsettin Sami which appeared in various newspapers tackled the problem of
simplification.

Efforts aimed at "Turkification" of the language by scholars like
Ziya Gökalp
became even more intensive at the beginning of the 20th century.

Furthermore, during the reform period of 1839, emphasis was on theoretical
linguistics whereas during the second constitutional period it was on the
implementation and use of the new trend. Consequently new linguists published
successful examples of the purified language in the periodical "Genç Kalemler"
(Young Writers).

3) 20th Century Turkish - The Republican Era and Language Reform

With the proclamation of the Republic in 1923 and after the process of
national integration in the 1923-1928 period, parallel to all the changes and
reforms in the country, there was consciousness towards the language as well. The subject of adopting a new
alphabet became an issue of utmost importance. In this period no one played a
more important role in the development of modern Turkish than Atatürk,
the founder of the Turkish Republic.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had the Latin alphabet adapted to the Turkish vowel
system, believing that to reach the level of contemporary civilization, it was
essential to benefit from western culture.

The creation of the Turkish Language Research Society in 1932
with the objective of simplifying and purifying the language, was another milestone in
the effort to reform the language. It's efforts produced positive results and
important steps were taken to simplify the Turkish language by purifying it of
Arabic and Persian words and idioms that had invaded the literary language
during the Ottoman Empire.

The studies of the society, later renamed the Turkish Linguistic Association,
concentrated on making use again of authentic Turkish words discovered in
linguistic surveys and research and bore fruitful results.

At present, in conformity with the relevant provision of the
1982 Constitution, the Turkish Language Association continues to function within
the organizational framework of the
Ataturk Cultural, Linguistic and Historical Higher Council.
The purification, simplification, enrichment and enhancement of Turkish are
among the responsibilities of this organization.

Language reform has closed the language gap
that used to exist between the classes in Turkish society and a certain
democratization of language and literature has occurred during the 20C.

The essential outcome of the developments of the last 50-60 years is that
whereas before 1932 the use of authentic Turkish words in written texts was
35-40 percent, this figure has risen to 75-80 percent in recent years.

This is the concrete proof that Atatürk's language revolution gained the full
support of public.